In the past I have already spoken of the Baptistry of Florence, of its enigmatic look, of its obsessive geometry that seems to radiate along invisible lines all over the city.

Last week I heard that on the occasion of the International Biennial of Culture and Environment, Florens 2012, approximately seventy centuries-old olive trees had been arranged in Piazza San Giovanni, putting the Baptistry in the centre of an urban installation.

I asked myself if the olive trees would manage to soften the hardness of this building, sacred yet, as someone wrote, "intellectually terrible".

I went to verify and, trying to portray in a sketch the unusual look of the square I realized that I was still perceiving the Baptistry as ever before, while the olive trees seemed to be captured by its obscure dominant power, like victims of a spell.

To see the two posts that I previously dedicated to the Baptistry, clic here and here.(waterproof ink liner and watercolour pencils on travel sketchbook Winsor & Newton 5,8"x8,3" cm).

Via San Gallo has some indefinible feature that at the same time pushes me away and fascinates me.Passing here, despite the numerous windows from which one may easily feel observed, we are touched by a feeling of closure that makes this street impenetrable, mysterious. Maybe this can be explained if we consider that in the course of the centuries many convents, churches, pilgrims' hospices were erected one after another along this street, permanently marking its character.The name of the street itself derives from the small church built in 1218 a short way from here, along the river Mugnone, in honour of Saint Gallus, which in the Fifteenth century was enlarged and joined to a large monastery "accomodating one hundred friars". The convent was then destroyed in 1530 by the Florentines to oppose the imminent siege of the city by the Imperial Army, but still today along the street exist the church of Saint Clement with the adjoining convent of nuns, the Monastery of the Mantellate, so called for their characteristic mantle (mantello in Italian), the church and the monastery, also that of nuns, dedicated to Saint Agatha of Sicily.In my watercolour made on location, I portrayed the big tabernacle with the Assumption of Mary (popularly named Assunta) near via Saint Anne. A few steps away from there, nearly at my back, the old Hospital of Bonifacio, founded in 1377, destined to the syphilis ills in the Sixteenth Century and to the psychiatric ills in the Eighteenth Century (today occupied by the Police Headquarters), which surely contributes together with all the rest to make via San Gallo a quiet yet uncomfortable place. Here you can find another eloquent image of via San Gallo in one of my watercolours of approximately one year ago.(waterproof ink liner and watercolour pencils on travel sketchbook Winsor & Newton 5,8"x8,3" cm).